Chapter 1: Sherlock saw but he didn't observe. Can John help him to recover the memory of a key clue from a crime scene?
"I can help you."
"It's useless, John. I have tried every approach and nothing has worked. There is something I missed. Something at the crime scene. I've gone into my Mind Palace, I've walked through the scene, I've walked around my mind, around the flat, around the block, around half of London for God's sake! I just can't grasp it! It's right there! But I can't–" He cut himself off, pulling at his hair as he resumed pacing yet again.
The case had Sherlock in a frenzy. He hadn't slept or eaten, was as snarky as a snapping turtle to Lestrade, had left Molly in tears yet again, and pushed John's patience to the limit.
"I can help," John said calmly.
Sherlock waved a hand in dismissal.
"What you're talking about is bogus. Rubbish. Pseudoscience. I won't lower myself to parlour tricks to try and–"
"What's more important – your pride or the truth?"
Sherlock was stone silent. John could see the cogs working as his flatmate loomed over him, trying to find an appropriately derogatory come-back line. Silence. John saw the exact moment fight or flight kicked in, and knew he had won. Sherlock stiffened, turned on his heels and started to walk away. John grabbed his arm and pulled him back, his body language brooking no argument.
"Look at me." It was an order, delivered in unyielding tones.
Sherlock met John's eyes. If John was surprised, it didn't show. He'd expertly manoeuvred his right hand under Sherlock's and locked eyes with his friend.
"You trust me?"
Sherlock cocked his head fractionally before answering. "Ridiculous question."
"Answer it." Another order.
"Don't be stupid. Of course I trust you."
"Close your eyes."
"Whatever you're doing isn't going to work."
"Depends on how much you want the answer."
Sherlock had desperation written all over him. He closed his eyes.
"Push down on my hand. Bet you can't make it drop."
Sherlock snorted. Easy! He pushed down, John pushed up.
Before Sherlock could react, John unexpectedly pulled his hand away, and used his other hand to tug Sherlock's arm downward, with the command, "Sleep!"
Sherlock suddenly sagged against him. John held his weight. The startle response had a perfect outcome. John cupped his hand behind Sherlock's neck and gently rocked his head.
"Take a breath and go deeper." He felt Sherlock obey. "Your legs are strong and easily hold you up…Each breath takes you deeper. That's right… And another breath. Deeper still. Perfect. Every sound you hear only serves to take you deeper. That's right…"
Outside, a horn blared. Sherlock sighed and his face went even more slack. John nodded.
John knew that, despite what many people – including Sherlock – thought, it took someone with intelligence to be able to go into hypnosis. All he had had to do was work around Sherlock's highly logical mind that would have over-analysed a slower induction. A Confusion Induction would only work under certain conditions. A rapid induction was the way to go. Regardless of Sherlock's dismissal of the process, John had "prepped" him by explaining how safe and natural a state it was – not "sleep" at all, but heightened awareness, focus and suggestibility – that Sherlock would always be in control, and that he could end the state at any time he wanted. No one can be hypnotized against their will. Some part of Sherlock wanted this, although he'd rather be drawn by a car across cobblestones before he'd admit it.
"Your eyes are tightly closed. You could open your eyes if you want to…it feels so good to keep them closed, and it would take too much effort to open them." Sherlock's eyelids flickered briefly, then stilled. John knew Sherlock well enough to know he'd test him, but also knew that finding the key clue to solving the case would trump everything else.
"In a moment, I'll tell you to take a step backward…I'll hold you… You're safe and in control. Sherlock, take a step back and feel your chair behind you legs….That's right… Remaining in hypnosis, I want you to sit down. You can talk normally and answer me. Let me know when you're even more comfortable than you are now."
Sherlock plopped down and immediately tucked those long legs up to his chin. John grinned.
"I'm going to count to three, and when I do, you'll be deeply inside yourself. One…two …three… It's quiet…so quiet…no distractions…just the Work… Okay, good. I want you to imagine you're in the flat at St John's Wood. It's 17 hours ago. Let me know when–"
"I'm there."
"Marsha King's body is on the kitchen floor."
"Of course it is. It's the crime scene." John almost chortled. Not surprisingly, the Consulting Detective was already ahead of him.
"You've seen something that you did not consciously register as important."
Sherlock shifted, his brow furrowed.
"Allow your mind to be aware of it now."
His eyelids flickered as his closed eyes swept the crime scene. He frowned.
"You're looking at your watch."
"Am I?"
"I just told you that you are." Even in hypnosis, Sherlock was quintessentially Sherlock. "What time is it?"
"Emr…" John thought back. "About 1900?"
"Watch. Something important about time. A watch?" His eyes darted around the crime scene, scanning the mental image of the murder victim's flat. "No. No watch on any of the surfaces. Time. Time!" He started to get agitated.
"Sherlock, on the count of three, I'm going to touch your shoulder. When I do, you will go even deeper than before." He started to say peaceful, then thought better of it: peaceful wasn't a state Sherlock would respond to well. "One…two…three."
John reached out and touched the consulting detective's shoulder. "Deeper. Deeper than before." The change was remarkable. All traces of agitation disappeared, his face was once again placid.
"Keep looking around the flat." Sherlock was highly suggestible in this state and John didn't want to plant false memories by asking a leading question, but he also needed to act as Sherlock's assistant. "Keep looking. Anything to do with time. Are there any clocks?"
Sherlock's head cocked to the side. "No clocks on the walls or tables… Oh! A clock! A clock! Stupid! Stupid! How could I have missed it!?"
Sherlock surged out of hypnosis. He bolted to his feet.
"Whoa! Slow down. Coming out that fast, you might be dizzy. Disoriented."
Sherlock just waved him off. "I'm fine. You're brilliant, John. 'A clock'."
John looked confused.
"The microwave! The microwave."
John's perplexed look only got deeper as he observed Sherlock for any equilibrium disturbance. He still was in light hypnosis, despite what Sherlock thought, and would be until his mind and body caught up with each other.
"Care to explain?"
"Oh, for God's sake, the clock on the microwave!" Sherlock grabbed his phone and began texting rapidly. "It said 4:30. So it wasn't the clock giving the hour of the day- no-one's clock is that off, barring a power outage, which, according EDF-her bill's on the table–did not occur." He flashed the smartphone screen at John, but barely gave him time to glimpse it before he resumed pacing. "So it had to be the timer. Set to four minutes, thirty. But the dinner dishes were already in the sink. Food remnants were soft, sauce still wet. She'd only just finished. The timer was on; why was the timer on? Dessert? No. Not the desert type. No sweets lying about. Weight chart posted on the refrigerator."
A text alert chimed. "Lestrade. He's meeting us there. Come on. We've a microwave to examine."
The Consulting Detective stood next to the Detective Inspector as he opened the door to the microwave.
"Blimey," Greg whispered. "Right again."
"You expected anything different, Greg?" John asked with a smile.
There before them was a thoroughly unremarkable measuring cup filled with water-sogged, uncooked rice.
"The Yard's forensic team once again gets failing marks for thoroughness and imagination, I see."
"Yeah, well, you missed it too, first time, didn' you, genius?"
Sherlock shot Lestrade a filthy look.
"Our victim was pretending to set the timer to cook something, but it was a ruse. She was in her own flat, being threatened, she was desperate to hide something from the intruder—was he an intruder?—and measured out a cup of rice, but she was frightened, her hands shook, and some of the grains spilled on the counter, and the floor…" He picked up several of the neglected grains. "Barely visible against the Formica or linoleum. But she managed to slip something into the rice, which is now engorged with water, and we simply have to strain it…"
The lanky man swooped down and grabbed a pan and strainer from under the counter and poured in the contents of the cup, then spread the grains flat in the pan.
He spread his arms wide in victory. "And I give you…"
John saw it first. "A microchip."
"Not just any microchip," he said, as he examined it more closely with his lens. "One of the new generation of microfluidic chips," which, Sherlock didn't add, he'd seen in Mycroft's office one month earlier; his brother's security had some dreadful gaps. He prodded the chip with a triumphant gloat. "Prototype, actually. None of the attempts have been successful. Yet. Or have they?" He picked the microchip out of the milky-looking water. "I'd say our victim was into industrial espionage."
"I wasn't hypnotised," Sherlock called from the kitchen.
John rolled his eyes. "Of course you weren't. You just wanted to do everything I said for, oh, about fifteen minutes. Like that will ever happen again."
"But I remember everything."
"Of course you remember everything. Hypnosis isn't–." John gave an exasperated sigh. "I didn't give you a suggestion to not remember everything. It's not like in the movies, you know, where you're under my power, with me getting you to, I dunno, cluck like a chicken. Although that's something I might keep in mind for–"
Sherlock reappeared long enough to launch the Union Jack pillow at John's head, then calmly went back into the kitchen. "I didn't know you were trained in hynposis," Sherlock called out.
"What? Oh. Medical hypnosis, mostly. Can be very useful in a pinch." John grinned slyly. "There's a lot you don't know about me, you know."
Sherlock returned to the room and laid a cup of steaming tea on the table before John. The doctor smiled; he understood that was Sherlock's way of saying thank you.
"That, John, is a situation I try to remedy on a daily basis."